1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of distributed software applications. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for replicating files at multiple data centers using a pull model of file replication.
2. Description of the Related Art
The data that is accessed by a software application is generally organized into files managed by a computer system. If the computer system or the storage device on which the files are stored fails or becomes inaccessible, the software may not be able to access data that it needs. To protect against such a scenario, files may be replicated across multiple computer systems. For example, if the file is stored on one computer system that temporarily becomes unavailable then the application can still access another copy of the file if the file was previously replicated to another computer system.
Many businesses and other organizations rely upon software applications that access large amounts of data for mission-critical applications. Many of these applications require near-continuous access to data. For example, applications such as retail processing applications, airline reservation applications, and financial service applications must be available to perform transaction processing 24 hours a day. Systems that require data to be constantly available may use file replication techniques to replicate files across multiple computer systems.